Tuft and Needle: Don’t sleep like a baby, sleep like your husband

Sleeping like a baby is overrated

I honestly don’t know how he does it. Crying, screaming, nightmares — there he lies, blissfully unaware and fast asleep. My husband sleeps great. Like a baby. I, however, toss and turn, night after night, only to wake in the morning tired and drained. It’s not just that I was up throughout the night for mommy duty; I just could not get any true rest, like my husband seemed to.

Searching for a way to sleep like my husband

I figured that we might as well start at the ground up — our mattress — to find a solution, which is when I discovered my new secret sleep weapon: Tuft and Needle.

On average, you spend a little over 227,468 hours tucked in bed. That’s about 26 years over our lifetime in one spot! So why is it that we give so little consideration to the state of our bed? After I had Abbey, I spent so many listless nights that had nothing to do with the new baby in the house. Our bed was a big fluffy pillow, which is so nice when you first climb in, but by the middle of the night I was left with painful pressure points that made me toss and turn. But was I really ready to spend $3000 on a new mattress?

The Tuft and Needle story

In 2012, two friends working in Silicon Valley decided there needed to be a change in the way people buy mattresses. After spending thousands on their own mattresses — and subsequently hating them — they decided to take it upon themselves to revolutionize the mattress industry. Tuft and Needle was born. Their entire premise is that a quality mattress shouldn’t cost a fortune — and they actually don’t.

What struck me as different with Tuft and Needle is they are very transparent with their business model. In their own words, “We believe in quality craftsmanship without the gimmicks. We work with the best to get the best. And then we sell the best for exactly for what it should cost.” Tuft and Needle foam mattresses start at $350 for a twin and go up to $750 for a Cal King.

That sounds amazing, of course, but I’m a skeptic. How great could a mattress at that price point be? I also don’t like to spend more than $100 on anything that I’m not absolutely sure I will love. I did a lot of research, and I found was that people really love this mattress. 

The design

All Tuft and Needle foam mattresses are made here in the USA, right down to the zippers, with their fabric coming from a 90-year-old family-owned textile mill in the Carolinas. The finishing touches are put on each mattress in Southern California, where they are then compressed, packaged and ready to be sent anywhere they are needed.

Tuft and Needle is strictly an online retailer, though they do have one showroom in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. Luckily, I live in the Phoenix area so I was able to go and take a tour. If you’re nearby, I strongly suggest you visit them. Bonus: they’re incredibly nice and will let you snuggle up on their beds for as long as your little heart desires!

My Tuft and Needle experience

Through all my research online, I heard the shipping at Tuft and Needle was fast — and they weren’t kidding. I ordered my mattress on Wednesday afternoon, and it was at my door by Monday. The box is heavy, about 98 pounds for a king.

Upon dragging the box into our bedroom, all we did was open it up, slide the rolled up mattress out and lay it where we wanted it. It’s good to note that because of the density of this mattress — 10 inches — a box spring is not necessary. A slatted foundation will do. Our bed frame does have slats but I opted to put down a bunkie board, essentially just a piece of plywood over the slats, in place of any sort of box spring.

The mattress itself comes compressed for shipping, so it’s flat like a pancake when unpackaged. All you do it take one side, cut it open and suddenly the mattress just grows, for lack of a better term. It takes about 30 seconds to fully expand, then it’s ready to sleep on.

Unlike other shipped foam mattresses, I found there to be zero off-gassing (AKA, smell), which is good because my husband is very sensitive to smells. Unlike other leading foam mattresses I’ve owned, this one doesn’t get hard when the weather gets cold. On the other end of the spectrum, this mattress has amazing airflow — unlike regular foam material — for warm sleepers like my husband. He wanted me to mention that he no longer wakes up in the night sweaty and over-heated.

 The guarantee

Tuft and Needle offers a 10-year guarantee on all mattresses purchased directly from their website. So if you ever find there is a visible dent of more that 3/4 of an inch, all you do is contact them and they will replace it. In addition, they give you a 100-night trial. If you’re not happy with your mattress, they will give you your money back. They don’t expect you to get the mattress back in that little box for returns, either. If you’re not happy with your mattress, they ask that you donate it to your favorite charity instead. That alone tells you how great this company is.

My husband and I haven’t even been on our mattress for 100 nights yet, and we are both sleeping better, longer and more solidly than on our other bed. For me, I have found I no longer toss and turn at night. My pressure point pain has gone away, and I finally know what it’s like to sleep like my husband.

It’s glorious. 

Meet the Author | Nicole Yontz

A SoCal girl transplanted to the Arizona desert, Nicole Yontz is the go-to girl for all things gear. She shares her home with her handsome husband, their two daughters (Audrey & Abbey), two dogs, one fish, and countless dust bunnies. When she’s not busy testing out the latest and greatest in gear on her darling little guinea pigs, you will often find her getting a pedicure as she does every single week. Because there’s no law that says you can’t.

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